“Tilt your head back, push your pelvis out like you’re making love and hook your legs around like a banana. Capisca?”

There I was, sitting with my legs hanging out of an airplane, wondering how I ended up in Molinella, Italy, about to jump out on my first tandem skydive.

Rewind.

The first day we arrived in Florence, the hostel owner showed me a bunch of skydiving videos. Apparantly he’s taken to sky diving this past year like a fish to water and has already jumped 36 times. He asked if I wanted to go on Saturday, which would be my second last day in Florence before heading for Germany. I brushed it off, but after getting asked a few more times later in the week, I decided it would be a cool thing to finally do. Although I’m mildly scared of heights, I always wanted to try sky diving but never got around to it at home. What better way to finally do something I’ve thought about for the past 10 years and also have even greater memories associated with my Europe trip?

Saturday rolls around and I get woken up at 5:45am. “Trevin, wake the $!@* up”. Nice way to start the day after 4 hours of sleep. The only worse way to get woken up would be for him to flick cigarette butts in my face. We catch a train out to Bologna, Italy, which is 1 hour north of Florence, then another train out to Molinella which is another hour North-east of there. We end up at this tiny train station in Molinella without a car in sight. It shouldn’t have been surprising that this small town of 14,000 people wasn’t bustling at 8am. We call the sky diving joint that Marco frequents, the FlyGang, since they’re 5 miles away and we didn’t feel like walking. After adventures in Rome, I’m trying to minimize the amount of unnecessary walking. Gotta save myself for walking from tent to tent at Oktoberfest y’know.

After signing my life away on a waiver form that is entirely in Italian, I get introduced to Saba, my tandem jumpmaster who also gives me my 15 min orientation. It all boiled down to me relaxing, getting my body in a certain position (remember the pelvis!) and smiling for the camera, all while going 110 mph. Easy enough, right?

By this point, I’m crazy excited to jump and we all pile into the plane. We manage to stuff 9 people into the plane plus the pilot: myself, Marco, 3 camera men, another tandem jumper and 2 jumpmasters. We were packed like sardines. Maybe a bad analogy since I don’t think sardines willingly jumping in or out of the can.

The plane takes off as we head for 4000 meters (just over 13,000 feet). As the plane gets to 3000 meters, the ground looks closer than I expected. I guess your perspective changes once you’ve decided to jump out of a plane and plummet towards the earth at break-neck speeds. We get to 4000 meters and they tell me they are going to go higher to 4300 meters to get a longer free fall. Fun. The altimeter tips at just over 4300 meters (14,107 feet!) and they rip the door open. The noise in the cabin was crazy from the rushing wind and the air was so cold. Even now, I can still remember it whipping against my face and the combination of fear and excitment deep inside me.

I flip my leg over the bench and Saba repeats his instructions:

Tilt your head back, push your pelvis out like you’re making love and hook your legs around like a banana.

Truthfully, he didn’t use the words ‘making love’, but I have to maintain my G rating on my blog

We jump.

First 3 seconds I’m scared sh*tless. It wasn’t even a conscious thought — it was my body’s visceral reaction to the thought of dying.  5 seconds into the free fall and it suddenly gets quiet since we’re so far from plane now. It’s so quiet its eerie…. and we’re traveling at 110 mph. Holy crap.

After a 70 second free fall the chute opens and it feels like we get sucked back up in the air. Saba lets me control the parachute on the way down and I’m able to get us in this insane spiral… better than any amusement park ride I’ve ever been on.  Good thing I have a strong stomach!  After a 5 min descent, we’re on the ground and it’s over. Wow, I want to go again.

Fast forward.

The 175 euros I paid was actually a pretty good deal — included the jump, free tshirt and DVD of my jump. I’ll be uploading that to YouTube when I get home for all to see my face flapping in the wind. Nothing like seeing your lips wag around uncontrollably as you give the thumbs up trying at all costs not to look scared.

Here are some photos I uploaded to Flickr taken before my jump:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevin/sets/72157594287653530/

Next up, Munich and bratwurst!

Update: The FlyGang guys posted up some stills out of my jump video. First, go here: http://www.flygang.com/public/album2/2006/PhotoAlbum.asp, then choose ‘Weekend_17-09′ from the drop down near the top of the page.

Update 2: Uploaded my video to YouTube: